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Eat, Drink, and Think

If you can’t get the city’s visionaries to attend your dinner party, go to theirs instead. Chew on This events are intimate dinners hosted by some of Indy’s biggest thinkers, and anyone can attend for just $20 (food included). Organized by Indiana Humanities, the events have been taking place—and selling out—for a couple of years, and the next one, Aug. 22, is filling up, too. As a main course, Indiana Humanities is serving up conversation about the Pan Am Games, held 25 years ago this month, a time when the city found itself at a critical crossroad. The table talk will focus on “what we decided to do in that era to bring the city back, what worked, what didn’t, and how we can carry it forward in the post-Super Bowl era,” says Brandon Judkins, programs director for Indiana Humanities.

Each of the 10 tables, all in different restaurants, will be capped at 15 people. Hosts include some of the visionaries who brought the Pan Am Games to Indianapolis and facilitated what turned out to be a watershed moment in downtown’s renaissance. Mark Miles’s table has already sold out, but you can still sign up to break bread with Ted Boehm, a recent Indiana Supreme Court justice and ex-head of the Indiana Sports Corp.; Jack Swarbrick, Notre Dame athletics director; and Sandy Knapp, a national marketing consultant in Austin, Texas, who headed up the Pan Am Games. Other table hosts hail from the ranks of Indy’s academics and new-generation movers and shakers, people who will spark chatter about how the Pan Am success can inform the city’s future.

The ticket price includes a drink and light bites—just enough to fuel the discussion without making for mouths too full to talk. If you can’t be there, you can eavesdrop on each table’s conversation on Twitter under the Chew on This hashtag (#chewonthis).